Joseph Campbell citations

Page 3

“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”

“Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.”

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself”

“I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child.”

“Myth is what we call other people's religion.”

“The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.”

“We save the world by being alive ourselves.”

“When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die…. (90)”

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

“You are the Hero of your own Story.”

“Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.”

“There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder
and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.”

“Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination.”

“Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.”

“Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery.”

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

“All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.”

“What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.”

“How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)”

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.”

“Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

Love is a friendship set to music.”

“It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).”

“When you follow your bliss… doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.”

“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.”

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

“They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure.”

“With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)”

“The problem in our society and in our schools is to inclulcate, without overdoing it, the notion of education, as in the Latin educere--to lead, to bring out what is in someone rather than merely to indoctrinate him/her from the outside. (89)”

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”